CHAPTER I

THE NATURAL REGIONS OF ARGENTINA

The physical environment--Colonization and the natural regions--The struggle with the Indians--Argentine unity--Argentina and the world.

The South-American continent is divided, from west to east, into three great zones. The lofty chains of the Andes stretch along the Pacific coast; at the foot of these are immense alluvial tablelands; further east are the level plains of the Atlantic coast. The eastern zone, the tablelands, ends southward at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. It enters Argentine territory only in the north-east corner of the province of Misiones. Below 35° S. lat. the alluvial plains open freely upon the ocean. The position of Buenos Aires, in the threshold of the plain of the Pampas, is somewhat like that of Chicago at the beginning of the prairies; if you imagine the north-eastern States and eastern Canada struck off the map, and the sea penetrating inland as far as the Lakes.

The three essential aspects of Argentine scenery are mountain, plain, and river. The Paraná, indeed, is a whole natural region in itself, with its arms and its islands, and the ever-changing low plain over which its floods spread, as one sees it from the top of the clay _barrancas_ (cliffs); though it is so broad that one cannot see the opposite bank. It wanders over the plain like a foreigner, an emissary from tropical America; for it has a flora of its own and tepid waters which often cause a fog over the estuary where they mingle with the waters of the sea.

From the general mass of the Argentine plains, we must set apart the region between the Paraná and the Uruguay, which Argentinians call "Mesopotamia." While æolian clays form the soil of the Pampa on the right bank of the Paraná, fluvial deposits--sands and gravel, in which it is impossible to distinguish the contribution of the Uruguay from that of the Paraná--cover a great part of Mesopotamia. The earlier beds of the rivers may be traced here, not only by the alluvial deposits they have left, but by the lagoons which still mark their course. Running waters have shaped the landscape and scooped out a system of secondary valleys, and these reflect the history of the river itself and the variations of base-level which led to alternate periods of erosion and deposit.

On the right bank, on the contrary, the Paraná has no tributaries of any importance except at the extreme north of the country. The scarcity of running water is, in fact, one of the characteristic features of the plain of the Pampas. Except in the east, along the Paraná, where a network of permanent streams develops on a comparatively impermeable and fairly humid soil, and except at the foot of the mountains, where irregular torrents and streams, swollen after a storm and scanty in the dry season, disappear, as a rule, within sight of the hills that gave them birth, there is no superficial organized drainage. As a whole, the alluvial covering of the Pampas, the upper beds of which are cut through by the _barranca_ of the Paraná, is not of river origin; it was brought and distributed by the wind, which took the place of running water. The clay of the Pampas is a present from the winds. The increasing dryness of the climate toward the west, as one approaches the Cordillera, explains the feebleness of the erosion by water and the extent of the erosion by wind.

It is aridity, too, that gives their particular character to the Argentine Andes. They have little trace of perpetual snow, the lower limit of which approaches to within about four miles of the Bolivian frontier. There are no glaciers there; they reappear in the south only in the latitude of San Juan and Mendoza, on the flanks of the three giants of the southern Cordillera, Mercedario, Aconcagua, and Tupungato. Below the small number of steep furrows which the glaciers have carved, and usually up to the top of the mountain, there spreads what has been called, very expressively, "the zone of rubbish." In this the winter's snows, fretted by the sun in that clear atmosphere, form those multitudes of narrow pyramids which the Argentinians compare to processions of white-robed pilgrims. The underlying rock is rarely visible. It is covered with a thick cloak of rubbish, split off by the frost, which the slow-moving waters released by the melting of the snows heap up at the foot of the slopes, at the bottom of depressions. The half-buried summits are succeeded by basins of accumulation. In the valleys round the mountains there are immense beds of detritic, half-rounded shingle. The torrents have cut their way through the alluvial mass, and they flow at the foot of high terraces which mark the sites of former valleys.

The spread of colonization toward the south during the last generation has extended Argentine territory beyond the limits of these classic scenes. The Patagonian Andes differ profoundly from the Northern Andes; and the change is not more sudden than that of the climate, to which it is due. Going toward the south, one passes, almost without a break, from the Atlas Mountains to Scandinavia. The moisture increases in proportion as the mean temperature falls. The mountains are covered with snow, and the glaciers lengthen. In one part of Patagonia they still form a continuous cap, an "inland sea," concealing the rock over the entire central zone of the Cordillera; though they are only the shrunken remainder of a glacial cap which was once far more extensive. Here ice was the chief sculptor of the scenery. It has made elevated tablelands, broadened the deep valleys which cut the flank of the mountain, polished their sides, and deposited at the point where they open out the amphitheatres of the moraines, behind which the waters have accumulated and formed lakes; and these lakes stretch back like fiords to the heart of the Cordillera, and are the pride of Patagonia.

The waters of these moisture-laden mountains have, to the east, carved out the Patagonian tableland. It is crossed by broad and boldly cut valleys, several of which, abandoned by the rivers which scoured them, are now dead valleys. The rubbish from the wearing down of the mountains and the glacial moraine has been spread over the whole face of the tableland in the form of beds of gravel. But the rivers that rise in the Andes cross a country of increasing aridity as they descend eastward. There is no tributary to add to their volume. There is none of that softening of lines, of that idle flow of a meandering stream which characterizes the final stage of a river in a moist district. Their inclination remains steep, and their waters continue to plough up coarse sediment; and everywhere, up to the fringes of the valleys, the fluting of the sandstone and steepness of the cliffs bear witness, like the edges of the _hamadas_ of the Sahara, to some other form of erosion than that effected by running water--the influence on the country of the westerly winds. On the tableland the wind polishes the rounded pebbles, makes facets on them, and gives them the colouring of the desert.

Thus from the north to the south of Argentina there is a complete contrast in the way in which the controlling forces of the landscape are distributed. In the north the moist winds come from the east; the rains lessen as they pass westward. The clays, capped with black soil, of Buenos Aires are æolian deposits, brought by the wind from the desolate steppes which close the Pampa to the west, fixed and transformed by the vegetation of a moister region. In the south, on the contrary, the rains come from the Pacific, and the fluvio-glacial alluvial beds of the Patagonian tableland are evidence of copious reserves of moisture in the Andes; but the arid climate in which the waters have left them has made its mark upon their surface.

This diversity of the physical environment is only fully brought out by colonization. It is colonization, the efforts and attempts of human industry to adjust agricultural or pastoral practices to the natural conditions, which enable us to assign the limits of the natural regions. In this differentiation it is essential to notice the historical element.

The introduction of new crops gives a geographical meaning, which had hitherto escaped observation, to climatological limits such, for instance, as the line of 400 millimetres of rainfall which is the western frontier of the region of cereals. These limits of crops remain uncertain for a time, then experience and tradition gradually fix them. They always keep a certain elasticity, however, advancing or receding according as the market for the particular produce is favourable or unfavourable.

Improvement in the methods of exploiting the soil--the adoption of better agricultural machinery, dry farming, etc.--usually leads to the extension of the sphere of a particular type of colonization, as it enables this type to overcome some natural obstacle which restricted its expansion. Sometimes, however, it brings to light a new obstacle and creates a new geographical limit.

To this category belongs the northern limit of the belt of selective breeding, which slants across the plain of the Pampas from the Sierra de Córdoba to the Paraná. The more or less degenerate cattle of the natives had spread over the whole of the South American continent, except the tropical forests, since the seventeenth century, adapting themselves easily to very different climatic conditions, from the Venezuelan _llanos_ to the _sertao_ of Bahía and the plains of Argentina. But pedigree animals, more valuable and more delicate, introduced on to the Pampas fifty years ago, are not able to resist the malady caused by a parasite called the _garrapate_. Hence the southern limit of the _garrapate_ suddenly became a most important element in the economic life of the Republic. It would lose its importance if we discovered a serum that would give the animals immunity against Texas fever.

The range of one and the same cause varies infinitely with the circumstances. The limit of the prairie, as of the scrub (_monte_) which surrounds it on every side, and keeps it at a distance of 320 to 440 miles from Buenos Aires, had no decisive influence on primitive colonization. Whether covered with grasses or brushwood, the plain is equally suitable for extensive breeding. The ranches are the same on both sides of the border. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, when the area of cultivation increased, the prairie was at once found to be superior. The labour required for clearing the brushwood before the plough can work is enough to divert from it, at least for some time, the stream of agricultural colonization. While the population of the _monte_, wood-cutters and breeders, are indigenous, the prairie has absorbed the immigrants from Europe, and the border of the scrub has become in many places an ethnographical frontier.[2]

[2] See E. A. S. Delachaux, "Las regiones físicas de la República Argentina," _Rev. Museo Plata_, XV, 1908, pp. 102-131.

The changes which man has made in the floral landscape are, as a rule, slight. The limits of the forest zone have scarcely been altered. The beech forest of the southern Andes seems to be less tenacious than the _monte_ which surrounds the Pampa, and it has been ravaged by fire along the whole edge of the southern steppe at 37° S. lat. The work of man is generally confined to changing the primitive complexion of the natural formations, without altering their general appearance. Thus valuable essences are disappearing from the forest and the scrub, the larch and the cypress from the district of the Patagonian Lakes, and the red _quebracho_ from Santiago del Estero.

A change that is scarcely visible, but is of considerable economic importance, thus takes place in the vegetation of the prairie owing to the presence of herds. The _pasto fuerte_, composed of rough grasses, which is the natural vegetation, is being succeeded by the _pasto dulce_, in which annual species, soft grasses, leguminous plants, etc., predominate. It is mainly composed of plants of European origin. The difference between the _pasto dulce_ and the _pasto fuerte_ or _duro_ is so important for the farmer that there is hardly a single work on Argentina which does not dwell on it. The idea, however, that the _pasto dulce_ has advanced steadily westward, starting from the vicinity of Buenos Aires and constantly enlarging its domain, is not strictly accurate. In 1895 Holmberg[3] traced the western limit of the zone of the _pasto dulce_ through Pergamino, Junin, Bragado, Azul, Ayacucho, and Mar Chiquita. When we compare this with earlier observations, we see that in the course of the nineteenth century the zone of the _pasto dulce_ has extended by about a hundred miles on the southern Pampa. When Darwin travelled from Bahía Blanca to Buenos Aires in 1833, he found no _pasto dulce_ except round Monte, on the right bank of the Salado. Further north, on the other hand, the extent of the _pasto dulce_ does not seem to have altered appreciably. The expedition to the Salt Lakes in 1778 found that there were already thistles beyond the line of the ranches, and these are characteristic of the _pasto dulce_ in the Chivilcoy region on the Salado, which was then abandoned to herds of wild cattle. "There was thistle enough to cook," says the journal of the expedition. The difference is connected with the history of colonization in the province of Buenos Aires, where ground was gained only toward the south between 1800 and 1875. Since 1895 the _pasto duro_ has been eliminated by agriculture rather than by the feet of the herds. Hence the advance of the _pasto dulce_ is no longer in a continuous line moving toward the west. It is sporadic, depending upon the construction of new railways which open up the plain to the plough.[4]

[3] Holmberg, "La Flora de la República Argentina," in the _Secundo Censo de la República Argentina_, vol. i. (Buenos Aires, 1898).

[4] _Diario de la expedition de 1778 a las Salinas_ (Coll. de Angelis, iv.).

Colonization does more than emphasize the individuality of each of the natural regions. It connects together different features, and blends them in a complex vital organism which goes on evolving and renewing itself.

The occupation of the whole of the soil of Argentina by white colonists is quite a recent event. The second half of the nineteenth century was characterized by a rapid territorial expansion, and over more than half the country the expression "new land" must be taken literally. It is only one generation since it was taken from the Indians. There can be no question here of tracing the history of the relations between the white population and the free Indians of the Chaco and the Pampa. The most formidable of these were, in the north, the Abipones and the Tobas. On the Pampa, the foes of the colonists were Indians of Araucanian descent, Ranqueles, Pehuenches, etc., who came down from the mountains and took to horses. At the close of the eighteenth century the frontier of Buenos Aires was on the nearer side of the Salado, and was bordered on the south-east and north-west by the fortresses of Chascomus, Monte, Lobos, Navarro, Areco, Salto, Rojas, and Melincue. The proposal of D'Azara to extend it as far as the Salado was not carried out, and it was not until 1828 that there was a fresh advance westward.[5]

[5] _F. de Azara, Diario de un reconocimiento de las guardias y fortines que guarnecen la linea frontera de Republica Argentina_ (1796, Coll. de Angelis, vol. vi.). The documents collected by de Angelis show clearly that there had been some idea in the middle of the eighteenth century of occupying the whole plain to the east of the Sierra de Tandil. These ideas of expansion, of which D'Azara's plan is another instance, were interrupted by the Revolution (_Diario de D. Pedro Pablo Pabon_, Coll. de Angelis, iv. etc.).

The new frontier, which would not be altered until 1875, passed by Veinte Cinco de Mayo and Blanca Grande, at the north-western extremity of the Sierra de Tandil. It included the entire region which lies between the Sierra de Tandil and the lower Salado, where the village of Tandil had been established in 1823. In addition, a line of forts stretched from Blanca Grande in the south-west to Bahía Blanca. The expedition sent in search of a port south of the mouth of the Plata had not found any nearer site that was suitable. But Bahía Blanca was to remain an isolated advance post until 1880, sharply separated from both the colonized zone of the Pampas and the establishments on the Patagonian coast.

While the cultivated area was thus growing toward the south, it was being reduced in the north of the province of Buenos Aires and the south of Córdoba. The lands of the lower Rio Cuarto were not occupied. About 1860 (Martin de Moussy) the farthest establishments in this sector were S. José de la Esquina and Saladillo on the Tercero. The road to Chile by the Rio Cuarto, Achiras, and San Luis was threatened. The advance of colonization in this zone was at first in the west to Villa Mercedes on the Rio Quinto. The line of the Rio Cuarto by Carlota was reoccupied, and before 1875 the frontier had been pushed back to the Rio Quinto, where it joined the forts of southern Buenos Aires by way of Sarmiento, Gainza, and Lavalle.

At last, in 1878, General Roca abandoned the classical methods of fighting the Indians, and took the offensive. He deprived the Indians of their refuges to the south of San Luis and the Central Pampa, and threw them back toward the desert. The Argentine troops followed in their steps as far as the Andes and the Rio Negro. There are to-day few traces in the immense territory that was won of the indigenous population. Its extreme mobility had masked its numerical inferiority.[6]

[6] M. J. Olascoaga gives (_La conquête de la Pampa: Recueil de documents relatifs à la campagne du Rio Negro_, Buenos Aires, 1881) valuable documents concerning both the details of the fight with the Indians and the distribution of their _invernadas_ (common lands) in the region of the Pampas. Olascoaga translates it "winter quarters"; it was pasturage on which they kept their cattle and from which they set out on their expeditions.

The history of the northern frontier is much the same. At the end of the eighteenth century the Spanish outposts ran along the course of the Salado. To the north of Santa Fé, at Sunchales, Soledad, and San Javier, they protected the direct route from Santa Fé to Santiago del Estero. These outposts were abandoned during the revolutionary period, and the Indians advanced as far as the suburbs of Santa Fé. The roads both to Santiago and, by the Quebracho Herrado, to Córdoba were cut.[7] Urquiza reorganized the Santa Fé frontier, first as far as San Javier, then below 29° S. lat. between Arroyo del Rey on the Paraná and Tostado on the Salado. The expedition of 1884 brought the Argentine army as far as the Bermejo, and broke the resistance of the Tobas. The forts which, more to the north, guarded the province of Salta, on the further side of the Sierras de la Lumbrera and Santa Barbara, had been dismantled at the beginning of the nineteenth century, as the tribes in this part of the Chaco were not hostile.[8]

[7] See Thomas J. Hutchinson, _Buenos Aires and Argentine Gleanings_.

[8] See Geronimo de la Serna, "Expedición militar al Chaco," _Bol. I, Geog. Argentino_, xv. 1894, pp. 115-79.

The memory of the fights with the Indians is so completely blotted out to-day, and the menace of invasion by the tribes has been so rapidly extinguished, that it is difficult to realize fully the profound influence they once had on colonization. The line of forts was a frail barrier that was constantly broken through. The Indians of the Pampa stole cattle from the ranches of Buenos Aires, and sold them in Chile. Colonel Garcia calculates in 1816 that about 40,000 animals were stolen every year.[9] Colonel Roca gives the same figure in 1876. The Pampa put no natural difficulties in the way of the movements of the Indians, no points which might serve as bases for the frontier. D. Pedro Pablo Pabon points out that the proximity of the Sierra, instead of giving protection to outposts in the Tandil region, would be an additional source of insecurity, as it increased the difficulty of keeping watch. In the north the Indian incursions followed the clearings in the scrub, avoiding the dense and impenetrable parts. The lagoon of Mar Chiquita, to the west of Santa Fé, was a valuable rampart, in the shelter of which a fairly large population had established itself round Concepción del Tio.

[9] _Nuevo plan de fronteras de la provincia de la Republica Argentina_ (Coll. de Angelis, vol. vi).

The enlargements of the frontier were sometimes due to expansive movements of colonization, the breeders occupying new land beyond the line of forts and demanding protection, and sometimes to the arbitrary action of a Government which was eager to extend its territory, though it was still without the means of exploiting it. Roca has well shown the defects of this system of premature military occupation. "To go far away from the populated districts in acquiring new territory is, in my opinion, only an aggravation of the inconveniences of defensive war, and it places a desert between the new lines and the settled regions.... Invasions occur at once."[10] We should therefore be likely to make serious mistakes if we were to identify the history of colonization with that of military occupation. Moreover, the garrisons of the forts did not take a very active part in the exploitation of the soil. The plan which D'Azara proposed, of making _blandengues_ (lancers) colonists and rooting them to the soil by distributing it amongst them, seems to have been purely Utopian. His description of the frontier shows clearly how slight a hold the early colonization had on the Pampa, where the only relatively industrious element was represented by the groups of civilians (_paisanos_) who gathered about the works and moats of the forts. It was different on the Santiago del Estero frontier, where there was agriculture as well as breeding. Here the fort was identical with the village, and each soldier had his plot of wheat, maize, or water-melons.[11]

[10] Letter to the Minister of War, October 19, 1875.

[11] See the curious picture, which Hutchinson gives us, of military life on the Rio Salado de Santiago about the middle of the nineteenth century.

The provinces which were to combine in forming the Argentine Republic had no economic unity. They were really two countries, two separate worlds, the coast regions and the mountain regions (_de arriba_), joined together, but not blended, by the main road from Buenos Aires to Peru, by way of Córdoba, Tucumán, and Salta. They represented two different branches of Spanish colonization. "Two human streams," says Mitre, "contributed to the peopling of the vice-royalty.... The first came directly from Spain, the mother country. It occupied and peopled the banks in the basin of the Rio de la Plata, in the name of the right of discovery and conquest, and fertilized them by its labour. The other stream came from the ancient empire of the Incas, already subdued by the Spanish armies. This spread toward the interior of the country as it passed from the Pacific to the Atlantic, occupied the land in virtue of the same rights, and exploited it by means of a feudal system.... The same year, 1535, saw the foundation of the two towns, Buenos Aires and Lima, and was the centre of these two cycles of discoveries and conquests. Thirty-eight years later, in the same year, 1573, the Conquistadores who came from Peru founded the town of Córdoba, two hundred miles away from the Paraná, while those who came from the Rio de la Plata founded the town of Santa Fé on the banks of that river."[12]

[12] Mitre, _Historia de Belgrano_, I, ch. i. pp. 4 and 5.

Tucumán and Salta were established by conquerors from Peru, while San Juan and Mendoza were built by the Chilean Spaniards. The line of demarcation between the two zones of colonization crosses the immense desert plains of the interior, not the elevated tablelands of the Andes.

The two types of Argentinians differed in every respect, in blood as well as in environment. The indigenous race, which was eliminated on the coast, mingled intimately with the conquering race in the interior.

The establishments on the Rio de la Plata had originally been merely stages on the road to Peru, and had no value of themselves. The elevated tablelands of the Andes long remained the economic centre of Spanish America, and the provinces of the interior, which sold them cattle and mules, depended very closely upon them. The end of the eighteenth century was marked by more rapid progress in the region of the Pampas. The vice-royalty of La Plata was created.

Freedom of trade was secured between Buenos Aires and the Spanish ports. The export of hides increased. The influence of Buenos Aires spread over the interior and, in spite of the Córdoba tariff, reached the regions of the north-west. "The creation of the vice-royalty," says Dean Funes, "and the new direction taken by commerce had the effect that Buenos Aires became the centre of considerable and important business."[13]

[13] D. Gregorio Funes, _Ensayo de la historia civil del Paraguay, Buenos Aires, y Tucumán_ (Buenos Aires, 3 vols., 1816).

This commercial development, which seemed destined to bring closer together the two halves of Argentinian territory, was interrupted in the first half of the nineteenth century. This did not, however, break the connections between the provinces to the north-west of the tableland and those on the Pacific slope, and indeed, they became more varied and more binding. Packs of mules, carrying the ore of San Juan and La Rioja to the foundries of the Chilean side, added life to the Cordillera. When Chile, transformed into an agricultural country, could not meet its own demand for cattle, the oases of the Argentine side were sown with lucerne for fattening the cattle which were to cross the mountains. The provinces of Mendoza, San Juan, La Rioja, Catamarca, Tucumán, and Salta were held within the orbit of the Andes districts.[14] There are historical reasons for this set-back to the influence of Buenos Aires. The wars of the revolutionary period and the conflicts between the Buenos Aires Government and the maritime powers checked the commercial enterprise on the banks of the Plata. This political isolation of the province of Buenos Aires, under the Rosas Government, lasted until 1853. Poncel gives us statistics of the imports of Catamarca which show the great importance of this date in the history of Argentine commerce:

[14] The Woodbine Parish map (1839) puts Tinogasta eighty miles out of its proper position, at the very foot of the Come Caballos range, thus reducing by one half its distance from Copiapo, on the Chilean slope.

Imports into the Province of 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 Catamarca:

From the Pacific across the Cordillera (in millions of 72 50 71 40 12 piastres)

From the Atlantic (Buenos Aires or Rosario) 11 7 20 64 116[15]

[15] B. Poncel, _Mes itinéraires dans les Provinces du Rio de la Plata, Province de Catamarca_ (Paris, 1864).

In 1854-5 the Cordillera route definitely ceased to be of commercial importance to Catamarca, and it was afterwards used merely for the export of cattle.

But the attraction of Buenos Aires after 1853 was not merely due to its commercial life and its intermediate position between the provinces of the interior and Europe. It was chiefly based upon the economic development of the region of the Pampas, which began about this date, and altered the balance between the two halves of Argentina. The exploitation of the Pampa, the improvement in breeding methods, and the introduction and expansion of agriculture on the plain of the Pampa, which fill all publications on modern Argentina, are in themselves one of the great events in the economic history of the nineteenth century. They had also an indirect but profound influence upon the life of other parts of Argentina. The consuming capacity of the Pampa increased simultaneously with its wealth and population. It absorbed the products of the neighbouring provinces and in turn made customers of them, distributing amongst them, according to the services they rendered, part of the gold it obtained from beyond the Atlantic. One after the other the provinces lost the relations which had hitherto connected them with foreign lands. There was the same development all over the zone of cereals and lucerne--the direction of the stream of commerce was reversed. In some places, as at Tucumán and Mendoza the change was accomplished a generation ago. In other places, as at Salta and San Juan, it is still going on. In yet other places, the more remote valleys, like Jachal and Santa Maria, it will occur in the near future. By a singular anomaly the Far West of North America, which sprang up half a century ago, tends to withdraw more and more from the influence of the eastern States, which provided it with capital and immigrants, while the Far West of Argentina, which is just as old as the east and by no means a creation of the east, since it developed in isolation and freedom, and was already adult and rich when they came into contact, has nevertheless fallen into complete dependence upon the east in the course of a few years.

The life of the whole country depended upon the great colonization movement which transformed the plain of the Pampas. This brought about an economic unity which was at once reflected in the political world. The railway from Buenos Aires reached Tucumán before 1880; Mendoza, San Juan, Salta, and Catamarca before 1890; and La Rioja before 1900. The establishment of closer economic relations between the coast and the provinces of the interior has nearly always inaugurated a period of great prosperity for the latter. In every case the influence of Buenos Aires vitalized them, put an end to their slumbers, and made them rich.

Not only did the coast take for itself the products of the western provinces, which had hitherto found their way to other markets, but new centres of production had to be created to meet its needs. The forests of the Chaco received a great influx of wood-cutters, to provide the sleepers for the railways. The valley of the Rio Negro was planted with vines, to provide the wines of the colonies in the district of Bahía Blanca. The attraction of the Pampa was felt as far as the frontiers. Paraguay competed with Corrientes in the supply of tobacco and oranges; with Misiones in the supply of _yerba maté_. Each district chose the particular crop which was best suited to its climate, in order to secure the highest possible advantage from its relations with Buenos Aires.

The two most brilliant satellites of the Pampa, the most important productive centres of the interior, are Tucumán and Mendoza. All the other important towns of Argentina belong themselves to the region of the Pampas. Tucumán and Mendoza, which live by supplying the Pampa with sugar and wine, have become in turn secondary centres of attraction. They are a sort of regional capitals, and they have their own spheres of economic influence. A network of commercial streams has developed about them, and this has led to the formation of new roads. These lines of local interest are easily recognized on a map of the railways, where one sees them superimposed upon the regular fan of lines which converges toward Buenos Aires. La Rioja provides the props for the vines of San Juan and Mendoza. From the north of Córdoba to Salta, a distance of about 250 miles, the wood is cut for the fuel of the sugar-works of Tucumán. Santiago dries the fodder for its troops of mules. The prairies of Catamarca, which once fattened the cattle that were intended for Chile, and often came even from Tucumán, now sell their beasts to the butchers of Tucumán. The wines of San Juan find their best customers at Tucumán. Even the nearest portions of the plain of the Pampas, to the north-east of Santa Fé and the south of San Luis, supply maize and wheat to Tucumán and Mendoza, instead of sending them to the ports for export.

While Argentina lives on the Pampa, the Pampa lives on export. It has been developed through the inflow of European immigrants, and Europe pays by sending its manufactured products and capital. Except as regards emigration, the United States had, before the war, much the same relation to Argentina as the countries of Western Europe. Thus the economic prosperity of the Republic binds it more and more closely to the life of the whole world. Its position in the temperate zone of South America had retarded its entrance into world-commerce, and this explains the slowness with which its colonization proceeded at first. Its climate and products were too similar to those of Spain. Not only the mining and metallurgical centres of the Andes and of Mantiqueria, but even the sugar and cotton regions of Brazil, the Antilles, and the Guianas, were developed before the plains of the Pampas.

The turn of the Argentine Republic did not come until the growth of population in the industrial countries of Europe made them dependent upon foreign lands for their food, and until the application of steam to ships made it possible to export wool, meat, and cereals on a large scale.

When we compare the economic organization of Argentina with that of the United States, we see that it is both less complex and less capable of being self-contained. The difference is due to the architecture of the country. I said at the beginning of this chapter that Argentina has no equivalent for the zone of the Atlantic tablelands, which is now the great industrial region of North America. The industrial prosperity of eastern North America provides a safe home market for the farmers of the west, and relieves them of the need of exporting their produce. Moreover, the Atlantic tablelands, the original centres of population, where the first generations of colonists lived on land that was often poor, have seen the gradual formation of reserves of labour and capital which were afterwards used in colonizing the west. The east sifted, in a sense controlled, the influence of modern Europe in the colonization of the United States. It classified and assimilated the new emigrants who set out for the west, mingled with the troops of native pioneers on their way to the prairies. In the same way, when European capital flowed into the United States, it found in the eastern cities a large treasury and a body of financiers in whose hands it had to remain.

In Argentina, on the contrary, everything speaks of the close and direct dependence of the country upon oversea markets. The soil itself bears the marks of this solidarity. It is seen in the network of the railways, the concentration of the urban population in the ports, and the distribution of the cultivated districts in concentric circles which are often limited, not by a physical obstacle, but by the cost of freightage between the productive centre and the port. Thus we get a geographical expression of facts which seem at first sight to belong to the purely economic or sociological order.